On Monday, I wrote about Common Sense Philosophy, American Democracy, and Total Depravity, but I had to end before I got to the really good stuff–Total Depravity! As Americans, we live with a deep-seated belief that we just know certain things, and that no one should question our common sense knowledge. As Christians, however, we believe that the Fall touched every part of our human nature, including not only our bodies and our souls, but our minds. As Andrew so succinctly put the issue in his comment, “Is our knowledge distorted by sin or not?”
It seems to me that there are two extremes that we should avoid when we think about how we know things. The first extreme is to deny that anyone can know anything, a position that cannot avoid its own ironic self-confidence. The second extreme is to hold one’s own opinions beyond any scrutiny. Somehow, Christians need to find a way to hold their beliefs and opinions with confidence, while yet with a humility that takes into account our own limitations.
Democracy throws this balance all out of whack, though, by forcing everyone to come to his/her own opinions on every issue. Certainly, people would have had opinions in all societies throughout history, but democratic societies uniquely demand opinions from the people, even when there is no good reason to think that normal people could come to a quality, informed opinion. Even if everyone had all the relevant information regarding a particular issue (which no one ever does), it would be a mistake to think that sinful, selfish motives never influence the way we evaluate the data.
Yet it is nevertheless my civic duty to form my own opinions, and then to vote. When we stop and think about it, that just seems odd.
Related posts:
Ben
/ April 15, 2010This is probably due to the legal field’s obsession with precise language, but I am often frustrated by the overbroad and basically unknowable statements of “fact” made in our political discourse. I do not think democracy really “demands” everyone have an opinion on every issue (the fact that around half of voters never bother to vote for whatever reason shows that at least a fair number of people do not have strong enough opinions to invest time in voting), but our social norms do not place a very high bar on having an opinion (for instance, we don’t look down on someone for having a strong opinion on tax policy without educational or professional experience in economics and fiscal policy).
On an individual level, I agree that each person should be acutely aware of her personal biases and cognitive failings, but how can we make a system of governance that minimizes these problems (especially when the system is devised by the very broken people who will be governed)? The general path democracy seems to select is to spread responsibility around so no one selfish interest will have an easy time taking over. The trade-off is that we are always dealing with numerous competing selfish interests and then expecting that it will result in policies that serve the collective good. That is how it seems to me at the moment, anyway.
Allison
/ April 15, 2010I have very strong opinions about the relevant things in my life, as you well know, but I generally don’t form strong political opinions unless they’re directly related to Christianity.
I feel that I can form those opinions and hold them to be complete Truth when they come out of Scripture and not my mind.
p.s. I read your blog!
Jacob D. Gerber, CPP-T
/ April 16, 2010@Ben–
Good points–I might have overstated how democracy “demands” an opinion, but, I do think that democracy does place a higher value on opinions than any other kind of society. The more I try to figure out the way forward in democracy, the more I keep coming back to an idea of democracy on “offense” vs. democracy on “defense.”
On offense, democracy lets popular whims set the agenda, so that the felt need of the moment (whether real needs or needs that have been contrived by someone or something) becomes policy, whether or not that policy is good or not. In essence, this is mob rule.
On defense, however, democracy allows certain people to propose ideas, and then allows other people to point out potential problems that the one proposing the idea may not see. Humility is required here of all parties, and I think that it would work better than any other solution. As with all ideal political philosophies, however, the difficulty is in implementation.
@ Allison–
Thanks for reading AND for commenting! The only concern with what you would propose would be in validating that the political opinions you hold to are indeed in the Bible. For example, the Bible doesn’t *exactly* address issues a lot of our contemporary issues (e.g., abortion, bioethics, nuclear warfare, technology in all its roles, etc…), even if it does make statements that should inform our opinions on those subjects. My only point here is that, in a lot of ways, this can be tricky, and we should walk with humility when we do form those opinions.
David Pinn
/ April 16, 2010Hmm. I wonder if allowing people to abstain from voting gets around the forced-to-have-an-opinion issue.
Jacob D. Gerber, CPP-T
/ April 17, 2010I probably did overstate that point. My main point is that democracy encourages (to the point of brow-beating sometimes) people to have opinions, since the people are the ones making the decisions, not a king without any accountability to an electorate.
There is no doubt, however, that free-riders exist in every democracy.